A convener, design coach, and strategizer, Dee works translate experiences, and research into a creative trajectory for her students, and collaborators. Design research and tools for the design of healthy urban spaces in underserved communities with a focus on the residential interior are the center of Dee’s research and teaching. With a research-driven collaborative and mentorship approach, this work includes novel biophilic, or natural, design; housing insecurity; interior materials and advances in building science within the urban home. As a design researcher, Dee believes that informed design and trans-disciplinary collaboration is at the heart of novel advances and improvements in the built environment. Dee instructs Graduate Design Research and Interior Architecture and Design Students and Undergraduate Interior Design students as well as mentoring and interfacing with students across the university. She is the director of the MS Design Research program, she also coordinates the Sustainability in the Built Environment Minor. As a member of Drexel’s Center for Health in Designed Environment, Dee works to build opportunities for trans-disciplinary health and design based research. Holding a Bachelor of Architecture from Carnegie Mellon University, she then received an MFA from the University of the Arts and is a registered architect, and an NCIDQ certificate holder and LEED Green Associate. In summer 2017 she became a doctoral student at Antioch University under the topic of equity and change in design education. For almost ten years, she ran a solo practice in Philadelphia executing residential interiors, experimental materials reuse, storefront revitalization, space planning and adaptive interior nonprofit reuse. She recently received a certificate in Health and Design from Cornell University. Current funded research includes a Health and Design Research project with Dr. Yvonne Michael, that focuses on Housing insecurity in the Urban environment. She is also a founder with Dr. Shivanthi Anandan of URBN STEAMlab, a group that examines food production in the urban environment. An invited critic at the University of Pennsylvania, University of Tennessee Knoxville, University of the Arts and Gallaudet University, she has presented research works at both national and international conferences.